DEAN STILL THINKS THAT Lola was overreacting, being so worried about him and Sam not getting along. She always tends to overeverything. Dean thinks it's endearing, having someone this worried about him and his brother. Don't expect him to say anything, it's something he'll take to his death bed.

But if Dean thinks that Lola was overreacting, it's because they did go at each other. Only it wasn't that bad, Dean barely threw his little brother against a wall after he mentioned their mom. It's nothing.

And anyway, they have bigger fish to fry right now. Or, more precisely, bigger bones to salt and burn. It's just his way of saying that they haven't talked about it.

They are occupied by other things, though, like their dad's motel room being covered in newspapers, notes on every wall, not to mention the salt by the door and windows. Their dad was after something. And he was protecting himself from something too...

Sam gets closer to the newspaper clips. The victims seen on the wall include Mark somebody, William Durrell, Scott Nifong who disappeared in 1987 at age 25, and somebody Parks. Mark, Durrell, and Nifong are all white males, judging by the photos. Except their gender, there's absolutely nothing in common between all of them, and it's infuriating.

"I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs," he starts as Sam crosses the room to the other wall, "ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right?" He stares at the man in front of him. "What do these guys have in common?" He shrugs. "Maybe we should call Lola. I bet that nerd would find something in seconds."

Sam frowns at him from the other side of the room. It's, at least, the fifth time he mentions calling Lola for help. And Sam is being kind. He gets it, that urge to call Lola over anything. He does call her at least once a week, but he wonders why his brother has to make up excuses to just... pick up the phone.

"Lola knows less than us, Dean," Sam remarks. "I don't think she'd manage to just know what's going on."

Not that he doubts his best friend to come up with something – but their information is very, very scarce and it would simply be impossible. At least that's what he thinks.

"I wouldn't put it past her," Dean retorts quickly. "Eh, I've been feeding her the details by text anyway." He frowns at his phone. "She hasn't responded in hours though."

While Dean talks, Sam looks at the papers taped to the other walls. There's something about the Bell Witch, two people being burned alive, a skeletal person blowing a horn at several scared people with the note 'MORTIS DANSE', a column about 'Devils + Demons', another about 'Sirens, Witches, the possessed', a wooden pentacle, and a note that says 'Woman in White' above a printout of the Jericho Herald article on Constance's suicide. Sam turns on a lamp to make sure it's what they're hunting, and nods to Dean.

"Dad figured it out."

Dean turns to look. "What do you mean?"

He points at the news clipping he recognized. "He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."

Dean scans over the photos of Constance victims. "You sly dogs. Bet you anything Lola would have figured it out."

Sam stares at him. "I'm not betting on that."

"'Cause you know I'm right."

There's a knock on the door. The boys share a quick look, before jumping into action. Sam is first closest to the door and first to draw his weapon. He hides it behind it as he opens the door, and immediately freezes.

Lola bats her eyes. "Well are you going to invite me in or shoot me with that gun you're hiding?"

Sam stares at his best friend's face for a few more seconds, her big brown eyes staring back at him with snark, before a wide grin slits his face, and he makes way for her to walk in. "Hey, Lola!" Dean immediately drops his gun and appears behind Sam, which makes him chuckle for himself. "Did Dean manifest you into existence?"

Lola narrows her eyes at him, walking past him, not getting what he's implying. "He wishes."

To be fair, Dean's brain has been resetting for the last few minutes now. Last time he saw Lola, she was 22, she was barely out of her teenage years, had those big round glasses that hid half her face on her nose, and bangs that hid the other half. Her smile used to display braces, and he always thought of her as his nerdy best friend, almost like his sister but not quite, and he didn't know why.

Now, he knows why. He's not sure what the fuck happened in those two years, she still has her glasses, a bit smaller though, but she got rid of the bangs and the braces, and Dean realizes how much of an idiot he was for not seeing it earlier. The heart-shaped face, full lips, the small down-turned nose, freckles dancing over it, from one high cheek to another, and the thick raised eyebrows over her big brown eyes... Lola is downright beautiful.

And he hasn't looked down yet. He does. As discreetly as he can – which is not much – his green eyes roam her body, from the long legs to her square shoulders, collarbones exposed by her black top. She's muscular – she has to be, if she wants to survive on hunts – and he knows how fast those legs can make her run, but it's really not the practical aspects that are plaguing his mind. His heart fails. She's your best friend, worse, she's your little brother's friggin' best friend, you cannot think of her that way.

Lola is staring at him too, but not for the same reason.

"Dude why are you filthy?" He completely forgot his little dive in the river. She sniffs and makes a face. "Oh my god you stink."

"Dean jumped into a river earlier today," Sam says with a sly smile.

"Interesting extracurricular activities." She turns back to Dean. "By the way, Cupcake, I was on the plane, so I couldn't answer your texts – have you figured out it's a woman in white yet?"

Dean stops staring. "Well – we, uh..."

"You," Sam corrects, eyebrow raised with a knowing smirk.

"We," he insists, because the stuttering is awkward enough. "We didn't know that, obviously." Get a grip, you son of a bitch. "Maybe a phone call before barging into our room would have been useful?"

Lola snorts. "No, your face was definitely worth it."

Sam frowns. "How did you get here anyway? The airport isn't close at all."

She shrugs and clears her throat. "I uh... Stole a car."

Mother of the year! In her defense, the car wasn't rented, so technically, it didn't belong to anyone.

"Ha!" Dean scoffs. "Atta girl."

Lola ignores him, and claps her hands. "So, woman in white, did someone have a hint?" She finally looks around the room, to all the newspaper clippings on the wall, and blinks. "More than a hint apparently."

Dean and her are used to immediately spring into action, and start working on the case the second she gets to him. Sam still wants to talk about what it's like at home, and how Bobbi is, and how she is, after her flight, but they pull the rug from under him.

Dean walks past him to close the door and nods. "Yeah, Dad's been busy. He rented the room for 3 months."

Lola has a small, sad smile. "Not here then?"

"No." He looks back at Sam. "All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it."

While he speaks, Lola makes her way to the closest wall, the one with the victims.

"She might have another weakness," Sam supposes.

Lola hums. "Just to be sure, I'm pretty sure your dad would've burned the bones." She turns to Sam. "Is there anything on where she's buried?"

"No, not that I can tell," Sam tells her. "If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband." He taps the picture of Joseph Welch. The caption says he's thirty; the article dates to 1981, so he must be sixty-four. "If he's still alive."

Lola snorts as he goes to look at something else. "Sam, he's sixty-four, not like, ninety-six."

Dean walks closer to Lola, and looks at the picture below the Herald article, of a woman in a white dress.

Lola's nose scrunches up. "Dude. Go take a shower, I'm begging."

He rolls his eyes. "All right. Why don't you, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up."

Dean starts to walk to the shower, and Sam turns to him, Lola watching them cautiously.

"Hey, Dean?" He stops and turns back. "What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry."

Dean holds up a hand. "No chick-flick moments."

Lola is about to retort, but Sam laughs and nods. "All right. Jerk."

"Bitch."

She waits for him to close the door to the bathroom. "He's allergic to emotional vulnerability, but I think he means well."

"I heard that!" Dean's voice calls from the bathroom.

"Good, that was the point!" she screams back at him. "I swear, he has the emotional capacity of a six years old."

Sam snorts as Dean scoffs in the bathroom. Which makes Lola remember that Sam isn't like him, and doesn't necessarily want to avoid emotions, so she opens her arms and grins.

"And hi Sammy!" Her eyes are bright with pride. "Look how much you've grown."

Sam rolls his eyes fondly at her, and hugs her. "It's Sam now."

"Not to me it's not."

She's tall – tall for someone assigned female at birth, at least – yet his whole body completely envelops hers. He's missed her.

With Dean and his dad, she's the closest thing he has to family, or home, for that matter. She's like a sister to him, really, but not in the same way as Dean. Dean's his big brother, of course, he took care of him, raised him, basically did everything for him. Lola is his best friend, his confident, his equal, in a way.

"I missed you," he says, and she nods in agreement.

Her relationship with him is different than the one she has with Dean, he can see that, he's not that oblivious. The best way to explain it would be by using the phone calls she has with the brothers. Sam calls her every week to keep her up to date, and check in on her. Dean waits for something to come up so he can pretend he had an excuse to call her. See what she said earlier about him being allergic to emotional vulnerability.

"It's been too long," she complains, because it has.

He lives halfway across the country now. Last time she saw him was at Thanksgiving the year before. She tried to invite Dean too, but he said that he was on a hunt, so she didn't insist. A few days later, he showed up. Bobbi found him delightful, because he played with her and showed interest in what she said. He's always been good with kids.

They talk about everything and nothing for a while. About Jess, Lola smiling and nodding, because from what she's heard about her, she's the best. They also talked about Sam's interview on monday, and how antsy he was. Lola knows he'll do just fine, maybe more than that. How Bobbi lost a tooth a few days earlier while eating Halloween candies in secret – Sam said that it was very Lola of her. Lola says it can't be any other way, since she's Bobbi's only parent. Sam doesn't answer.

Bobbi's dad fled to another state when he learned that Lola was pregnant. She was 17. He had been 23. It took several late night talks between her and the Winchesters to 1, come up with a plan in case Lola aborted, 2, come up with a plan in case Lola didn't abort, and 3, try to refrain the Winchesters – especially Dean – from tearing the guy a new one. Or killing him. Lola didn't want them to end up in jail. Maybe that's why Dean is so suspicious of Terrence.

Lola hesitated for a long time, but decided to keep Bobbi. Her situation was more than complicated, but she just couldn't do it. And she's happy she did, because she's the light of her life. She's never met her dad, and she turned out perfectly fine, and she can raise her daughter on her own, she doesn't care what she has to sacrifice to do so.

Her mother, Manuela, helped her with Bobbi. The three of them lived together for a few years, before Lola moved in with Terrence. The Winchesters also dropped by every now and then, to visit, help a bit, if they could. Not John, though. Manuela had patched up and fed his kids enough to know better than to let that man in. And even if she did, Lola wouldn't have allowed him anywhere near her daughter, not after what he did to his sons.

Lola does not appreciate John Winchester all that much. He was the worst father she's ever seen, and that includes Bobbi's dad and her own dad, so that says a lot. Raising them as hunters, denying Dean of his childhood, ramming it into his brain that Sam was his responsibility, the only thing that could ever bring him worth in his father's eyes. Dean's first hunt, for his 17th birthday, being the ghosts of two lesbian nuns who killed themselves? He drove to her the following days, and held back tears as he explained it to a horrified Lola, holding a birthday cake she had made for him. She remembers Dean's shame when he told her about Lee, about his intimate relationship with his boyfriend Lee, and his fear that this hunt only meant that John knew about it, and wanted to punish him. She remembers wanting to punch John in the face, and promising Dean that he would never be allowed in her house. It would always be Dean's safe place, no matter what. John was rarely involved in his sons lives — much too obsessed with finding whatever killed his wife — and the only times he gave a damn, it was never good. And that's without getting her started on how he brought up Sam and that whole Stanford fiasco. To tell him that if he walks out the door, he won't come back? If anyone's going to make sure John Winchester is missing, it's her.

Yet, here she is, halfway across the country, helping them to find him. Because there's nothing she wouldn't do for these boys.

Which also means she's sitting on a chair by the desk, playing with the headband on her wrist while Sam listens to Jessica's voicemail, and Dean showers. Which lasts longer than expected.

Lola sighs through her nose. "Dude, how long is this going to take?" she screams out to Dean.

As an answer, he steps out with a grin. "You can't rush perfection."

"Then perfection hasn't met me yet."

Dean hasn't changed much since the last time she's seen him. He's still tall, muscular, handsome, and annoying as he ever was. But she forgot what those green eyes could do to her, she realizes, mouth going dry. And those lips? It looks like God Himself descended on Earth to carve them. It should be illegal.

Dean can't help but smirk at her stare. "I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?"

"Ugh, yes, anything" she groans, holding her stomach. "You know how to charm a lady."

"You're so not a lady."

She throws her foot into his leg, and he retaliates by yanking on her hair.

"You're on thin fucking ice Winchester."

"Sure I am. You want anything Sam?"

Sam shakes his head, still focused on what Jessica had to say. "No."

He gets his credit card out. "Aframian's buying."

Lola tuts. "Still with the fake credit card? That's pretty illegal."

"Says the girl that stole a car."

She rolls his eyes at him, and watches as he leaves.

She watches Sam smile absent-mindedly listening to his girlfriend's voice, a smile of her own fighting its way to her face. She's glad to see him happy.

Her phone buzzes, yanking both of them out of whatever trance they were in. She stares at the name on the screen.

"Didn't you leave 3 seconds ago?" she asks Dean as he answers the phone.

"Five-oh, sunshine, take off."

She stands up, and carefully watches through the curtains. Sam follows, worried, and his eyes widen at the scene. Deputies are approaching Dean. "What about you?"

"Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad."

"What? Dean–" He's already hung up the phone.

"We have to go," Sam presses. "One of them is coming here."

She looks back at a window to see a deputy walking casually to the room. She quickly darts away from the window.

"Okay, yeah, we gotta go."

author's note: most of the things that digress from canon are head canon i found cool on tumblr — most are well known other not but i find them better than canon soooo

also writing 300 words on how john was a shit dad is weird therapeutic